Believing the Model

Move from understanding the Model as an idea to living deliberately from the result you want.

There is a difference between understanding the Model intellectually and believing it deeply enough to live from it.

I knew thoughts created feelings long before I understood the full significance of choosing what I wanted in the result line.

Over years of coaching myself, the tool became deeper and more useful. I stopped using it only to change a painful thought and began using it to become the person who could create a result I once thought impossible.

That shift changed my life.

The Model describes something I observed

I think of the Model as an observation I put into a useful structure.

I did not change the world so that thoughts would create feelings. I studied my life and the work of my teachers and saw a relationship that was already there.

Circumstances are separate from our thoughts. Thoughts create feelings. Feelings drive actions. Actions create results.

When I wrote Self-Coaching 101, I wanted people to use and share that tool. It felt like a way of describing something true rather than something to hoard.

People often tell me the concept feels familiar, almost as if they are remembering it. Other teachers describe the same ideas in different ways. The presentation can differ while the underlying teaching remains.

First, I learned that thoughts were optional

Early in my practice, I spent time testing the Model with myself and clients. I wanted to understand what belonged in each line and how the lines connected.

I examined thoughts about my past and saw how they affected my present.

At first, I often used what I call thought swapping. I found a painful thought and tried an alternative way of thinking.

Sometimes that helped immediately. Sometimes it did not. But it taught me that the first thought was not mandatory.

My brain was not simply reporting facts. It was offering opinions and judgments.

Recognizing that was exciting and unsettling. I had to take responsibility for the feelings, actions, and results I was creating rather than treating my life as something happening to me.

Separate what happened from what you think

In the Model, a circumstance is something everyone could agree on. A tree is planted in front of us. We are in a house.

The adjectives and judgments we add are thoughts.

There were fewer facts than I had assumed. Much of what I had treated as the truth was actually my interpretation.

Seeing that gave me more authority over my experience.

It also changed how I understood other people. Their actions came from their thoughts and feelings, just as mine did.

I could become curious about someone who did not believe or behave as I did. Understanding the Model helped me open my heart instead of constantly sorting people into categories of right and wrong.

Then I stopped needing to replace every thought

As my practice developed, I noticed I did not always need a second Model.

I could identify a painful thought and recognize that it was optional. Sometimes that recognition let it dissolve without replacing it.

Other times, I could allow the negative feeling. I did not need to hurry into feeling better.

Trying to feel good all the time had not served me. Whenever I felt bad, I added another layer of feeling bad about feeling bad.

I began recognizing negative emotion as part of the contrast of being human.

I could know my thought was creating pain and still choose to experience the feeling. It did not have to mean something had gone terribly wrong.

Willingness changes what you can do

When you are afraid of how you might feel, you can organize your life around avoiding it.

When you are willing to feel humiliation, doubt, failure, or shame, you can have a bigger life than your brain's preference for comfort would give you.

People tell me fear fuels them. I want them to look closely at what happens when they act despite fear.

Often there is another thought: I can do this, or this is worth doing. That creates courage or confidence while fear may still be present.

Understanding the emotional fuel matters. You can choose to act from love, belief, ambition, or determination instead of hiding in doubt.

The result line changed everything

My biggest realization was that I could deliberately choose what I wanted in the result line.

This is different from a circumstance. I am talking about the results created through my thoughts, feelings, and actions.

I began asking what I really wanted to create, even if it seemed impossible.

I put $1 million there. I also put something that felt even more impossible to me: not desiring alcohol.

I did not only want to stop drinking. I wanted alcohol to become irrelevant and uninteresting.

I practiced the Model aligned with that result. I lived into it until it became the result I was experiencing.

That showed me something deeper than understanding a concept. I had used it to create a change I had not thought possible before.

Practice being the person now

Saying you believe you will do something is different from practicing being the person who does it.

One keeps the result out in the future. The other asks how you think, feel, and act now.

When I am committed to my desired Model, I watch my brain offer thoughts that pull me away. Then I return to the thinking I want to practice.

I do not need to know every action in advance. I did not know years ago exactly how I would create my current business or change my desire for alcohol.

I practiced the belief and the feeling, and kept taking the actions they supported.

I love the image of an emotion acting like a magnet, drawing me toward the behavior that creates the result.

Prove the relationship to yourself

Begin by looking at your own life. Trace a result back to the actions, the feelings driving them, and the thoughts creating those feelings.

Notice the same relationship in other people's lives.

Then bring the practice to what you want. Put the desired result in your Model. Work on the thoughts that help you feel and act as the person creating it.

If you have used the Model for years, ask where you still make an exception. Where do you think your feelings or results are being created outside you?

Question that belief. Decide whether you want to practice the Model more fully in that area.

This is the work of living deliberately: understanding what you are creating now and believing, practicing, and living into what you most want to create next.